dark.

He, in the uncomfortable breach
Between her trilling laughters,
Promises, in halting speech,
Hopeless immense Hereafters.

She trembles like the pampas plumes.
Her strained lips haggle. He assumes
The serious quest....

Now as the train is whistling past
He takes her in his arms at last.

It's done. She blushes at his side
Across the lawn--a bride, a bride.

........

The stout contractor will design,
The lazy laborers will prepare,
Another villa on the line;
In the little garden-square
Pampas grass will rustle there.

Harold Monro [1879-1932]

THE BETROTHED
"You must choose between me and your cigar"--
Breach of Promise case, circa 1885.

Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarreled about Havanas--we fought o'er a good cheroot--
And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box--let me consider a space,
In the soft blue veil of the vapor, musing on Maggie's face.

Maggie is pretty to look at--Maggie's a loving lass.
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There's peace in a Laranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay,
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away--

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown--
But I never could throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town!

Maggie, my wife at fifty--gray and dour and old--
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold.

And the light of Days that have Been, the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar--

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket--
With never a new one to light, though it's charred and black to the socket.

Open the old cigar-box--let me consider awhile;
Here is a mild Manilla--there is a wifely smile.

Which is the better portion--bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?

Counselors cunning and silent--comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride.

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close.

This will the fifty give me, asking naught in return,
With only a Suttee's passion--to do their duty and burn.

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.